A Study Of The English Translation Of Chinese Classical Poetry From The Angle Of Hermeneutics

Poetry translation is agreed to be the most difficult job in the field of translation.There are no lacking scholars arguing that poetry cannot be translated. It is all the moredifficult to translate Chinese classical poetry into English. Despite the toughness of thetask, though, translators have never stopped their hard work and have achieved much inthe field through their down-to-earth labor. On the other hand, dissatisfaction on the translation has never ceased its voice.Different schools debate about how the work should be done and the issue seemsunsolvable. This thesis presents a study conducted within the theoretical framework ofhermeneutics. It begins with an overall review of Chinese classical poetry, followed bya discussion of some generally accepted translation criteria and the explanation of whythey are not applicable to poetry translation. After the analysis of the viewpoints ofdifferent schools of contemporary hermeneutics, to achieve the closest approximation ofthe original text is proposed as a general norm for translation. Prof. Xu Yuanzhong'sthree-beauty theory is introduced as a sum-up of the artistic features and achievementsof Chinese classical poetry. The author argues that while translating, the stress should beput upon the beauty in content, for the beauties in form and sound are hard to transferinto English. In view of the significance of images in conveying the beauty in content,a principle of translating Chinese classical poetry is put forward: to achieve the closestapproximation to the original images. To apply the proposed principle to practice, theauthor further offers some specific tactics to translate images with a large amount ofcase analysis presented. In conclusion, the author calls for more translators to devote themselves to thetheoretical study and practice of Chinese classical poetry translation, so that the goldentreasure of Chinese civilization may be introduced to the world.